SecretAsianMan

I also love the Wirecutter, at least in theory. In practice only about half of the things I get based on their recommendations turn out that good. That being said, I completely agree with Nick about the Coway air purifier. That thing is great. I like to cook but the design of my house means that most of the fumes and smoke from my kitchen go up the stairs where the main house smoke detector sits. I used to set it off all the time, but I put one of the air purifiers at the top of the stairs and now I hardly ever have it go off unless I really burned something.

I also recently rewatched AoU and had a similar takeaway as Roderick. I think it's because at this point I'm more used to the dumb goofiness that is the MCU. In general I like the Marvel movies. I won't pretend they're good cinema but I enjoy them for what they are. What I find interesting is some of the ones I'm down on are the ones that everyone else seems to like. I thought Guardians 1 and 2 were fine but I don't understand the love. And I flat out hated Iron Man 3. I'll admit I initially wasn't interested in Black Panther just because I don't find that character interesting and something about the visuals is off-putting to me but I'm reconsidering my opinion and am thinking about watching it in the theatre rather than waiting.

While listening to this episode, I did start to consider if making an Important if True wiki would be a good idea. I've been listening to Thumbs related media since Idle Thumbs Episode 1 and I still get lost among the reference to a reference to a reference (to me to me to me).

Awful Block highlight reel

You thought I forgot didn't you? It's a new year which means another Games Done Quick marathon. Awesome Games Done Quick is coming up this weekend, Jan 7-14. For anyone not aware, AGDQ is a marathon gaming event where some of the best speedrunners in the world gather together to raise money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation by beating games as fast as possible. Many of the runs have donation incentives or bid wars. There are also a large number of prize drawings during certain blocks of games. Schedule Twitch Stream Donation Page Donation Tracker Official YouTube Channel AGDQ 2018 Thumbs Curated Playlist

Backing up Chris' endorsement of an extra long shoehorn. I own the same model and it is legitimately nice to have. It came in especially handy when my wife was pregnant and bending over became more and more of a challenge. On the topic of messing up verbs, there is a similar thing I do in Chinese all the time. In English, everything on your person is "worn", be it clothing or accessories, unless you are physically holding it in your hand. In Chinese, only certain articles of clothing are "worn", others are "brought/carried". For example, you would "wear" a shirt but "bring/carry" a watch. I constantly fuck this up.

Following up on Nick's endorsement of AGDQ, there's a forum curated playlist of runs that anyone can view or add to. I've watched almost every run by now and while I don't think there are as many standouts as in past years, there are some that are definitely worth a watch. My personal favorite is the Mike Tyson's Punch-Out/Super Punch-Out run where the runner played both games simultaneously using one controller. AGDQ 2018 Thumbs Curated Playlist

The devs have announced that Dead Cells is coming to console sometime this year. Glad to see a Switch release on there, feels a like a great game for on the go.

Based on how I've seen you react to other things, this is probably correct. The Orville is definitely not for everyone, I mainly wanted to point out that there's more to the show than "Seth Macfarlane in space".

The humor takes more of a back seat as the season goes on (it never goes away completely though), so if you could get through the first two episodes without hating it I encourage you to keep going. In a way I appreciate the humor even when it misses (which is most of the time). I think it brings a sort of human relatability that TNG era shows lacked. The Orville isn't crewed with the paragons of humanity and everyone is a smartass to some degree.

I added the Link to the Past Randomizer Swordless race to the playlist. That was an amazing run to watch. The randomizer is a mod that takes all the items in LttP and shuffles their locations. This means that there's no set route and your ability to get to any specific part of the game hinges on finding the right item. As a result it requires an immensely detailed knowledge of the game to know where you can and can't go as well as a large number of tricks and glitches. The two runners used the same seed so both their worlds were the same but since neither one knew where anything would be their paths through the game diverged greatly. They also couldn't see or hear each other so as not to reveal item locations. Towards the end they were literally half a screen apart. It was a fascinating thing to see. Good commentary too.

Hmm, I'll have to look into it. Edit: Looks like I may have posted the wrong link the first time, try it again using the link in the top post.

As always I've created a public playlist that anyone can add a run they thought was worth watching. I'll put the link in the top post as well. AGDQ 2018 Playlist

He's the captain so he features prominently but the show isn't centered around him. Many of the episodes are focused on the other characters or the situation they're in. It's a lot like Trek where the captain is a central figure but the rest of the cast gets a lot of time too. If you're worried the show comes across as a live action version of his other shows, I'd say The Orville is really toned down relative to his other work, although that same type of humor is absolutely there. As an example, one of the episodes has one of his officers getting in trouble on a planet for dry-humping a statue of a respected figure. While the setup is ridiculous and raunchy the actual body of the episode takes it pretty seriously and is a TNG style examination of a society.

I watched The Orville over the weekend and to my surprise I enjoyed it a lot. I echo what itsamoose and thelastbaron said. It might be the most Star Trek thing in years. It's very TNG with bits of Voyager and DS9 here and there but much less clinical. The dialog and writing in general are fairly crude but nowhere near the level I was expecting given the show's pedigree. The jokes I found to be hit or miss (mostly miss) but in a way I still kind of like having them there because it makes the crew more relatable and grounded and less like a group of overeducated scientists and philosophers. Several of the plots are almost direct lifts from other Trek episodes but manage to avoid complete repetition. Some of the episodes are directed by Trek alumni as well, such as Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris), Jonathan Frakes (Riker), and Brannon Braga (writer, director, producer for TNG and Voyager). Many of the tropes are in full force such as a non-biological crew member studying humanity, a serious and stoic alien officer, away teams composed entirely of senior staff, a non-interference policy with lesser developed species, etc. Overall I was impressed enough by the show that I look forward to more.

I just watched an amazing run of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out/Super Punch-Out. The runner, Zallard1, used one controller to play both games simultaneously. His routing and ability to quickly switch between games was incredible. It's also the run that broke the $1 million mark.

eRonin is correct. https://www.youtube.com/user/gamesdonequick is the official channel. Anything else is fake. I also wish they would cut way down on the use of "HYPE!". I get it, that's a thing the internet likes to say but GDQ says it so much more that it's often unbearable.

I would imagine a zero boss run means lots of out of bounds and/or maneuvering around cutscene triggers. I feel the same way. Glitches are neat if you know the game but are not actually that interesting to watch most of the time. My favorite runs tend to be either 100% or low% runs with few glitches. Races are great too. They've been doing more relay races in the past few marathons and I'm into that. One of my favorite runs from past GDQs was a Ninja Gaiden relay race that went back and forth several times and has a photo finish

I only took a quick glance but nothing on the schedule particularly stands out to me. I'll make my usual plug for PJ running Battletoads Arcade. Some of the newer games being run are Hollow Knight, Prey, Splatoon 2, and Sonic Mania. I'm a little surprised Mario Odyssey isn't being run. I realize it's relatively new but I still figured someone would submit a run for it. One thing of note is that Super Metroid is nowhere to be found at all.

I watched Wonder Woman the other day. Felt like half a good movie. It was fine until the big showdown with Ares and it became a really trashy comic book movie. I also didn't like that she was a sidekick for most of her own movie. Other nitpicks include how jarring her rock guitar theme was in the middle of a fight (on its own I kind of like the theme but in the context of the setting it really stuck out to me), too many shots of her face staring directly into the camera with a deer in headlights look, and the portrayal of some of the secondary characters.

Happy New Year folks. May 2018 be far better than 2017 (though I don't have my hopes up)

I agree with the shield thing. I feel like the timing of the parry is off which discourages me from wanting to pick shields even though I like them in theory. It also makes me focus on brutality and tactics upgrades, which is basically how the game was optimized before the changes. As for the random starting weapons, I like it. I can understand wanting to reroll until you get what you want but I find just going with what you're given makes the game more dynamic. The game would get old fast if I could just pick my optimum weapon over and over again. One of my favorite things to do in this game is an all weapons run, which is no matter what weapon drops I force myself to pick it up and use it. The blueprint thing I can also understand but I don't mind it for the same reasons as the starting weapons. There are a handful I absolutely never use (oil grenade I'm looking at you) but for the most part I switch it up a lot.

Last week news came out that the FCC is going to propose some new rules allowing companies to pay ISPs for the ability to deliver their content faster and potentially letting ISPs slow down competitors. The common example given is that MSNBC.com, owned by Comcast, could be given priority over other news services to any customer on Comcast (like ME) unless they pay Comcast a buttload of money. This obviously gives large corporations an advantage over smaller sites and businesses who can't afford that kind of deal. The actual vote doesn't take place for another couple weeks, but the fact that it's being considered at all scares me. Does this bother anyone else?

Has anyone ever used a split keyboard? I need a new one and I'm seriously considering getting a Freestyle Edge Split Gaming Keyboard from Kinesis. I'm loathe to get another "gaming" keyboard but I love ergonomic keyboards and a split keyboard would also work well to replace the keypad I currently use for most of my PC gaming. I'd like to stick with a mechanical one although preferably with quieter switches. The Freestyle Edge hits those marks (and a few others I don't necessarily need but aren't bad to have), but it's also a lot of money to drop on a keyboard. I need someone to talk me into/out of this.